The forgotten legacy!

Legacies matter! I grew up in times when kids were beaten up as punishment. My mother was an exception. She had told me stories of the mighty Odias (people from my state of Odisha in India) and how they had conquered a huge kingdom once and how they used to trade with far-off lands like Java and Sumatra. And when I would make a mistake, she would just say, "is this the way you are going to maintain your heritage?" That was enough to bring me to tears! Heritage matters! I shall tell about the maritime legacies of my land of Odisha/Kalinga/Utkala.

In October 2019, I was in a conference and met a Sri-Lankan researcher. As usual, people ask me which part of India I am from. Most people would not know where Odisha is. This guy knew it! And he told me one of their legends. Apparently, Singhalease legends say that long time back a prince from Kalinga was ostracised. He left with hundreds of his followers and settled in Sri Lanka and that was the beginning of Singhalese civilisation. That is why they know about Kalinga or Odisha. This means that the maritime culture of Odisha existed since ancient historical times. (PS: Ashoka the great sent his son and daughter to Sri Lanka to spread Buddhism in around 200BC. This means Kalinga's maritime culture has been there before this).

Stories tell a lot about the culture. Characters in stories tell a lot about prominent personalities and trades from history. (E.g. The famous Sanskrit play Mritchakatikam tells the story of love between a trader and a rich prostitute. This shows that prostitutes in ancient India were respected and powerful personalities.) Stories from Odisha/Kalinga will mostly have a character named "sadhaba". Sadhabas are people who used to do maritime trade. They would be rich, powerful and would usually leave home for half the year in their ships. This is very unique to Odisha. Stories from no other state tell about such a class of people.

Lastly, I will tell about the festival of boats celebrated in Odisha on the full-moon day which marks the end of the Hindu month of Kartika (falls in November). This festival is called Bali-jatra (literally "voyage to Bali")! People would go to the nearby water bodies and float small boats made from banana-plant-parts. This festival is NOT celebrated in any other state in India. BUT, this is a big celebration in all the South Eastern nations, celebrated under different names! In Burma it is called Tazaungdaing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tazaungdaing_festival), in Thailand it is called Loi Krathong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loi_Krathong) and in Laos and Cambodia it is called Bon Om Touk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Om_Touk). These are the places the erstwhile Kalinga-Sadhabas used to sail to.

We Odias need to know our heritage and stories. Heritages matter! Legends matter! Stories matter.

Mao's mentoring!

(The following story is biographic. Only the names of the persons and the places have been changed.)

Dr. Atul Dash finished his medical studies in 1961. The economy of India was slow and not enough number of jobs were there (even for a fresh doctor). Dr. Dash kept applying for jobs. Applications, interviews, and rejections kept him busy. Before he had realized five years have passed since he graduated! One evening, having tea with his uncle Bamadeva, his uncle suggested why does not he open a clinic in Bamadeva's village? Bamadeva was a communist leader and was trying his best to improve the situation of his tribal village. (It can be noted here that those days a major tribal belt of India had significant Maoist-communist activities. Those were the days when the communist movement was fermenting in India. Soon, in 1967, things went really violent starting from the village Naxalbari. From this has come the current word of Nazalism.) With the support of Bamadeva and his friends, Dr. Dash opened his clinic. He would charge 2 rupees as consultation fees. That gave him just enough money to maintain a hand-to-mouth life. 

One day, a villager named Kashu visited Dr. Dash's clinic. Kashu had some problem in his leg. Dr. Dash diagnosed it as an incurable disease. However, Kashu had been advised by some people that getting a few injections will sort things out. He insisted on getting "some" injection. Dr. Dash had to inject pain-killers against his own judgment. Kashu would come once in a few days to get another injection. After eight shots, he was furious. He shouted at Dr. Dash, "what kind of doctor are you? You can not cure a simple pain even after eight injections. Did you do your studies using black money or stolen money?" This was the last straw on the camel's back. Dr. Dash lost it and slapped Kashu! 

Kashu lost no time and rang the village emergency bell! All the neighboring villages used to have such bells to organize a mass in case of an emergency. Soon a crowd of 400 villagers surrounded Dr. Dash's clinic. He was bound to a tree. The leaders (including Bamadeva) sat down to decide on the case. Dr. Dash was found guilty and was fined a sum of 800 rupees. Either he would pay the fine or be tied to the tree till he dies! Dr. Dash did not have that amount of money. He gave up and thought if this is the day he was to die, so be it. Bamadeva intervened and talked to the leaders and other friends of his. Amongst themselves, they collected a sum of 200 rupees and Dr. Dash took some loans and the fine was paid. 

This made Dr. Dash think. He thought people could "demand" cure because they have "paid" for it. He took a vow to never ever take a single rupee as consultation fee from anyone. He did find a job and became a successful cardiologist. Currently, at the age of 82-82, he keeps working as a doctor at a charitable dispensary. If anyone invites him to spend a few hours in some dispensary, his first condition would be the non-payment of any consultation fee by the patients. For, he was well mentored by Maoist movements!!

LISTENING

There is no love without understanding; there is no understanding without observing and there is no real observation without mindfulness. Let us quickly analyse this. Of course if I love someone I need to understand him. Without that there definitely shall be misunderstanding and the end of everything beautiful. And to understand anything or anyone I need to observe. Without observing I can not even  fix an IKEA table (and understanding a human is just out of question  if I am not observant)! The last link is the most interesting. If I want to observe something I have to make sure that I give my full attention and without doing ten other things in my mind simultaneously. In this age of multitasking this is a difficult task to do. But it needs to be done if I want to observe properly. 

And the major way we interact with another human is through talking. Hence, if I want to observe a person then I need to be completely mindful when he speaks. I have to listen with my full attention; not to accept or reject what is being said; not to just extract catch phrases from it and make my own impression of what is being said. Easier said than done. Even the venerable Ananda (one of the major disciples of Gautama the Buddha who was responsible for transcribing all of Buddha's talks) confesses this every time he starts archiving one of Buddha's addresses. He shall never write "Buddha told" so and so; rather he will write "I heard Buddha telling" so and so! The difference is subtle but very crucial. 

Please try to do it as an experiment. Try to listen to anyone/anything with full attention. Before you realise you shall start comparing, recording, or very quickly thinking something else. As a matter of fact our brain is not designed to listen/see the complete thing out there! Hypothalamus, a very crucial part of human mind, filters out the sensory signal/data and only sends contextual and some catch incidents to our brain to be processed! No wonder it is so difficult to listen anything "completely"! 

But it is not impossible. As we just discussed, it is biologically impossible given our current brain architecture. Which just means that we need to rewire our brain! As Sci-fi it may sound it is actually possible and brain-plasticity is one of the main research themes in the recent years. Of course it needs practice. And any practice needs motivation. What can be a better motivation than to love your loved one even more? This can be done by giving more and more attention to what he says. So that you don't just hear empty words; you see the intentions behind those words; you see the emotions behind those intentions; you see the preconditions behind those emotions; you see his life story behind those preconditions; you see the whole story. And when you see the whole story (not analyse; but directly feel it in an instant) there is complete listening. Then there can be no conflict; there is only love and joy.

LISBON DIARY

As odd as it may sound, I have never ever taken a real vacation in my life. I mean yes I visit places on conferences and collaborative visits. But then its always work related and while being away I keep almost full presence online and keep doing most of my official duties (as far as they can be done over internet). And when I am in India, visiting family and friends goes to almost to the level of chore. So when I decided on taking a vacation with Chris, I did not know what to do and how to do. We chose Lisbon because of the cheap flights I could get from Cape Town.

Saturday evening is when we landed in the capital city of the erstwhile mighty explorer nation of Portugal. They have been one of the most aggressive explorers from Europe and I have grown up with the epic stories of how Vasco de Gama discovered the sea route to India. This blog is about the series of bad experiences I had in Lisbon. I am not trying to open a complain book. Rather I am just trying to think may be these trends may point to the reason why the once-mighty seafaring colonial giant is currently an ailing economy.

Story 1: Where is my Uber?

After almost 25 hours of journey I did not have the energy to use public transport to get to our Airbnb. So I called for my Uber. Uber app told that “meet your driver at the Kiss-&-Bye point on 4th floor”! Lisbon airport has multiple mezzanine floors and its confusing what is what. We asked a lady in one of the shops. She told go straight and left and take the lift. We did that and ended up in a huge underground parking lot. Then I messaged my driver and he told he has no idea how we should get to him! Then we moved out, asked a security person and he sent us in another direction. Then a lady in a restaurant and she sent us in a completely opposite direction. And finally the driver told something sensible and we went out of the building and asked the guard there where can we find the parking place. He told go there…..pointing his finger to some vague direction. But finally we found our taxi. Its as if people enjoy telling things even if they do not know what they are telling. We shall see this story being repeated often. So much so that we made our own hypothesis!

Hypothesis 1: If a Portuguese tells you to go left then ignore her or
if at all you want to follow then go right!

Story 2: Where is my check in counter and boarding gate?

In a day I had to take a flight to Tallinn. Reaching the airport I realised that there are more than 4 clusters of check in counters and navigating between them needs some special skills. And again, I had to ask 3 persons; get lost a few times before I could find where to check-in. (That being said the security check and other processes were pretty streamlined). Once inside, one would need to wait till 15 minutes to the boarding time before they display the boarding gate. Its pretty counter-intuitive to me. I mean most of the flights do not originate from Lisbon and hence they would be knowing which gate will used for which flight. But for some mystic reason they won’t tell you the gate number till the very last minute!

Story 3: Where is the good food?

If you are a food connoisseur then be warned. We have tried in multiple places and the food is either terrible or you have dropped your expectations to such a level that even an absolutely plain food may taste OK. We were pretty brave in terms of experimenting with food and tried in a range of place starting from Pizza Hut ice-cream to a health food-place to Portuguese food in the tourist heartland to recommended brunch places to Asian food to Nepalese food to Pizza! Somehow people have lost the taste for good food or have just kind of accepted their destiny and manage with whatever crap is available.

Story 4: Where is my castle tour?

One fine day we wanted to do the most touristy thing and visit the castle. It was a decent 20 minute hike from ground level roads. The first trouble came when we stood in front of a trifurcation and there was no sign telling which way to go! Bifurcations and trifurcations kept surfacing up but never could we find any signage! I mean tourism department in India is pretty pathetic; yet they care enough to put some signs (especially something of this importance)!. And once we reach the top at the front gate of the castle there was a notice saying the castle is closed because of strike! How is this even possible? And even if it happened is not it just a kind gesture to put the notice below before people start hiking or taking taxi to come up?

Story 5: Where is my pizza hut?

After the castle saga, we took a really really long walk and by the end of it were too tired. In the search for something crap we thought of having pizza at pizza-hut. We checked it in Google-map and took an Uber. Reached in our street and there was no pizza-hut. Never ever has Goole-map failed me so far (not even in India or Thailand)! But I guess in Lisbon even Google learns a trick or two :) The pizza-hut was just not there! We tried to call and it linked to the pizza-hut office in Porto!

The Epilogue!

That being said, it’s not all bad of course. Lisbon is a fairly small city with pretty good public transport. The apartments have a nice vintage look to them; and the coffee is really nice. So if you have some great company then Lisbon is not a bad place to spend few days in!

OVERCAST LISBON

Overcast sky, chilly wind and cold drizzle;
With a wet jacket, cold is all you feel.
Small poddles of water on the road,
Light too dim to see only shadows,
With leaky canvas shoes,
Disgust and wet is all it feels!

But dim light feels so romantic,
And the cold jacket gives more the reasons to hold you tight.
Walking in rain with clasped hands,
Perspective is all it takes to change the sight!

Coming to the beautiful Lisbon,
And trapped indoor by the insistent rain;
Weary of the preceding long trip,
Hunger, anger and hopelessness is all you can retain.

Lying in the bed with you and
Looking at the smearing raindrops by the windows,
It feels so serene, and... time stops,
And life feels free from all shadows!

Perspective is all it takes,
To change shadow into inner brightness,
To make overcast Lisbon
A myriad colorful symphony of dripping droplets;
To make shoggy wet walks on potholed roads
Into delightful warm cosy memorable walks;
To turn the trapped indoor feeling
Into blissful exotic moments;
Perspective is all it takes.

Alter ego! (written in 2003)

It has just been another of those typical Saturday mornings in the Indian high tech cities, which we salaried people call weekend. So it looked as if the business clock of the city has started a few hours late.  The cuckoo, crow, and who knows what other varieties of birds were busy presenting their symphony. Not that they do it only on these great days called the weekends; but only on these days you become able to have some clear picture of their melodious chorus, due to the thin human interference. Dust free roads, sparkling sunlight, men-n-women in black and white on stroll,... these are some typical sceneries that you find on a weekend morning in Bangalore.

But for people like Salim the auto driver, Satya the vegetable vendor and of course our own Chinnamma, days and dates seem to have no special significance. Yeah, Chinnamma, the lady who comes everyday early morning to wash our utensils and clean our household; she must be around 35. Of course with the evergreen or ever yellow look on her face, if Sarita would say she is 30 or 40 or 43 or..., I have no proof to support my axiom on 

Chinnamma's age. Age is a luxury that only the non-poor can entertain with!!!

I and Sarita have never bothered ourselves with the exact details of Chinamma. And our language barrier, with Chinnamma's Hindi vocabulary amounting to two words and Sarita's Tamil proficiency limited to a few words, has stopped a gregarious housewife like Sarita from getting the family details of Chinnamma. All we knew was that she belonged to some distant village of Southern Tamilnadu and her husband was long dead in some odd road accident for which she is yet to get the 1 lakh rupees of compensation from the car owner who caused the accident. And of course she never failed to entertain her guests. Every week we would be having a few new faces in her one room roadside temporary home. But we have to admit that we have never seen Chinnammma in a gloomy mood in our last two years of stay.

And on that particular Saturday, my old friend Manu happened to pay us a visit in the early morning. As far as I remember I have never seen Manu rising before 9.30 in the day, when we were roommates in college. Of course time and marriage have the potential to change anything and everything!!! On enquiring, Manu told that he had come to take a few snaps of our Chinnamma. Photography has been the hobby of Manu since the days we were roommates. Of course presently for a long time, we had not been in touch, hence I had no chance to know if he had still persisted on his hubby. But like modern art, I have always failed to appreciate his snap-shots. Still I successfully hid my inability all those days. So continuing on my old habit, I again suppressed my surprise on why on earth should Chinnamma be photo graphed. Like ever, I appreciated (of course against my inner voice) his choice of subject and without delay asking Sarita for some snacks. I myself went to call Chinnamma. But my old friend stopped me and expressed his desire to frame Chinnamma along with her very own milieu. So we went outside to find Chinnamma busy in her eternal unending list of some odd job. This time she was cleaning the coconut leaves to gather the sticks for a broom. On hearing my voice, she just stood up and starred in a way as if asking like the Aladdin s jean "Just a call and I am ever ready to do any small chore for you, disregard to the time and place". But this time, I asked her using heavy sign-language to just sit down and do her job but give a glance towards us. With a lot of effort and another lot from Sarita we could finally convey our idea to her. Our good old friend, then, took his own time in adjusting his accoutrements and then another couple of minutes to take a few snaps. Busy as always he was, he left soon after finishing the job. But we could find Chinnamma working (who knows what) at the same place and for a quite a few hours so...!!!

And the very next day Chinnamma came to Sarita all blushing. We have never in these two years marked that pinkish Chinnamma!! May be some of her enlightened kids have told her about the magical instrument called camera ! So she told a lot of things to Sarita, from which she could clearly get that she wants to have a glance of her snaps. But I knew my friend very well and hence by another great amount of gesticulations, we conveyed to her that we will give her the photos after three months. And the next few days we saw Chinnamma glancing at the undecipherable thing called calendar on the wall. But soon she forgot the episode and was back to her old Chinnamma form.

Again it seemed, marriage and time have changed my friend. Because very soon, one day I got a mail with all those snaps of Chinnamma as attachment. Very religiously I got the best printouts of them as soon as possible. On coming to home the first thing that I deed was to show those snaps to Sarita. Though she was not impressed, but she appreciated Chinnammma's photogenic face !! And next we had to call Chinnamma. As ever, she was prompt enough to appear before us within a few minutes. And I handed over the snaps to her in a presidential demeanour, as if handing over some gallantry award to some army chief. Seeing the snaps, Chinnamma was dumb stuck. Her labour-stricken raged fingers touched her very own photographs. How strange, beautiful it would have looked to her eyes. We had doubts about when Chinnamma would have last looked at her own reflection on mirror. So obviously this reunion of Chinnamma with her alter-ego was a scene that neither me nor Sarita could ever forget. I positively doubt if Eliot or Keats would have been able to put those out-flowing expressions into words. Nor can there be any word for that emotion in any language of the world of mortals. And a matter of minutes, she was out of her trench of bliss and was smiling and blushing. Sarita conveyed that there was no other chore to be done. And she left for her home in a manner that can be compared to the way a Cat chases a mouse, swift though but silent enough.

Then for the next couple of days we could find Chinnamaa showing her snaps to every odd friend out there. It became her favourite hobby. May be for the first time in her life she got a HOBBY..!!! For people like Chinnamma words like hobby sound too expensive. But there was our very own Chinnamma, spending the few minutes of her hard earned time in her newly possessed pastime. Me and Sarita were observing her as our pastime, while our friend, the father of these pastimes, must still be enjoying passing his time in supplying a few more Chinnammas with their very own ALTER-EGOs...!!!

Perfection in imperfection!

Living in a stunningly beautiful place like Cape Town is a matter of luck. And the best part is that the weather never gets too harsh for my walk to university. And when you add regular meditation to that then one tends to get amazing thoughts during those walks!

Few days back, while walking, I felt an amazing insight. Yes I wanted to use the word "feel" because it was direct (and not the result of thought). Everything looked "perfect" and perfectly balanced. Every tree, every grass, every car, every person in those cars, all the thoughts in the heads of those persons...all beautifully orchestrated. Everything following sequences of cause and effect; everything in place.

"But, sir, the world is not at all perfect", you may say! Yes, there are nasty things in this world, nasty thoughts in the minds of some of those persons, nasty deeds done by some people, nasty natural disasters.....But if you can see that the tag "nasty" is something we give then things will look different. People are people; things are things; we add tags. Calling a person nasty for rape is equally ridiculous as calling lion nasty for killing deers. And don't get me wrong. I am not asking for forgiveness for the rapist. That is up to the law of the land and the people. I am just saying that its just cause and effect (and the cause that he raped will effect in him hanged or stoned to death!). Its like a giant machinery whose every part is working in perfect unison.

You may not like what you see; you may not enjoy what you see at times. But when you can view it all together, the whole giant machinery we call creation, you can just see perfect working of it all. Like a giant clock; you may not like the fact that its 8am and time to go to work....but you can not but amaze at the perfection of the clock....tick tick tick....

Mudita for Laddoo!

Last year I was thrilled to discover the word "MUDITA". It is a Pali word meaning the opposite of jealousy, i.e. the feeling of joy on seeing someone else's joy. There is no doubt that it is a strongly positive feeling with the potential of removing negativity and sorrow. Why would you ever feel sad if you can absorb the joy of others. Practicing this is not easy though.

Today morning I saw the post from a close friend stating that one of his friends made a box of delicious coconut laddoos (sweetmeat) as an un-birthday present! Of course my friend was thrilled. I felt a big tinge of jealousy. Then I tried to use Mudita, i.e. to feel my friend's joy. I could not. I tried to think why.....In my life no one has ever made an un-birthday present to me. No friend of mine had ever made a box of handmade laddoos for no reason. I do NOT know how it feels like when one gets a gift like that.

That made it clear why it is more difficult for us to feel Mudita than to feel empathy and compassion. We do not have much experience in being happy and joyful. In developing world we are too pressed for time and too pressed by customs to feel a wider range of joy. In developed world we are too pressed by selfish individualism to feel a wider range of joy.

People want to get rid of sorrow. But they never try to be free and enjoy joy like an epicurean. Even the life of Sakyamuni Gautama, the original Buddha, teaches this. Till the age of 29 He was immersed in pleasant life and 'so called worldly' joys. One can feel empathy only when one has experienced a range of pain himself. One can feel Mudita only when one has experienced a variety of happiness. And unless one is able to feel both empathy/compassion and Mudita there is no real freedom from pain!

The creator

Long back my mom once recited me the following Sanskrit couplet. It has made a fundamental imprint in my mind and has been a source of solace in difficult times.
Yena shukli-krita hansa;
Suka-scha harita krita;
Mayurah chitritah yena;
Sa tei britih bidhasyate!
(One by whom swan was made white; parrot was made green and, yet, peacock was made colourful; the same power also guides your actions and dispositions.)

This takes away the doership from you in a very subtle and elegant way. It gives us the power of self-love. It helps us to be little less harsh on ourselves. It told me many a times that my actions and dispositions have been fixed and determined by something way more powerful than me. What is this power? What is that power which has made parrot green, swan white and, then, peacock colourful? I was not sure.

Last year during spring I was in a guided tour of the famous Kirstenbosch garden. The theme was pollination. The guide was a frail petite lady in her late 60s who came with her partner (another petite lady in her 60s). The energy of the duo was infectious. One of the flowers she showed us is the one whose picture I have attached below.

It is an enchanting flower with intricate patterns on it. Then she told us the reason behind those patterns. Apparently the pattens help the pollinator (a tiny insect) to find its way to the nectar and pollens. The insect and the flower have co-evolved for millions of years giving arise to this splendid beauty.

It was like an "Eureka" moment for me. I could clearly see the force that made swan white, parrot green and peacock colourful. It is the ages of evolution. In the same way, the way we act, react and interact are all decided by long chains of causal events and coevolution. Everything depends on everything else, everything has affected everything else. How can I blame myself for my dispositions or actions when those have been determined by events occurring in time-scales way beyond my comprehension?

And when we see the interdependence and coevolution of the whole creation it becomes a bit easier to develop love and compassion for one's own self and for everything around. 

Brahmavihara

I am lucky to have friends who understand me. One such friend is Darryl who gifted me an amazing book as my birthday gift. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29496453-the-book-of-joy
The book is a guided dialogue between His-holiness Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Presented in a very methodological way it discusses many real life stories from the lives of both these men; stories which brought me lot of tears. But the book helped to me gather some new insights, insights which changed me fundamentally.

This made me revisit something which I have been looking at for a while now, viz. the four Brahmaviharas of Buddhism. These are four things professed by Buddhism as goals reaching which you can have consistent joy! Achieving these is difficult. But we can just try in bits! What I liked the most is that it is presented in increasing levels of difficulty! There are many write-ups on these. Still I could not resist myself from putting my personal understanding.

1- Metta: This means feeling oneness with others. The Sanskrit root is "Mitrata" which loosely translates to friendship. This is the easiest step amongst the four. Though it is not easy for many of us who have never fallen in love; who are too scared to feel the vulnerability of love. However, this is still the easiest feeling to develop. Something like Kim whom Kipling describes as "the friend of all three worlds"!

2- Karuna: This means compassion. This is another easy emotion to develop. You see someone suffering and that makes you feel bad. That is sympathy. If you feel the pain yourself as well then it is empathy. And if you are motivated to do something about it as well then it is "Karuna". Our lives are so full of miseries and sadness (I do not know why though) that when we see another person in pain we immediately relate to it. That makes sympathy an easy goal.

3- Mudita: I have written a blog on this. This is when you see someone happy and you feel happy as well. It is the opposite of jealousy. Most of us are so far from joy that we can not feel it when we see another person happy. It is one of the most difficult emotions. However, if one can achieve it then there is no lack of sources of joy for that person. And if we note carefully we shall see how extremely difficult it is to develop Mudita. I find it the single most important way to achieve perennial joy. 

4- Upekha: Loosely translated this means ignoring. So we have tried to be friendly with everyone and every thing; then we tried to feel the pain of others and then the happiness of others. Pain and happiness are both addictive! We get attached to them and as soon as we get attached we want things not to change. However Anica (another Buddhist term which means change) is a fact of life and if we get attached then we are back in pain (for others). So the last goal is to not get attached. This is the most difficult emotion to achieve and I do not understand it fully to tell more about it.

I believe, if exposed at the right phase of ones life, the four Brahmaviharas can start us in the path of eternal joy. 

Mudita

Coincidences are interesting. Two weeks back I was having an argument with a friend about the difference in the meaning of compassion and empathy. Few days after that one of my close friends from my engineering college sent a note.

"You asked me once in college, "when was the last time you felt happiness?" I said, "when i got into Infosys in campus selection". You said, "every other day some one else or other gets a job. Imagine if you can feel similar happiness when others get jobs as well. Wouldn't  it feel great?"
That was one of the best advices I have ever got."

I have completely forgotten this conversation and it was like a new advice for myself as well. I mused on it and remembered my uncle (my father's elder brother). He is one of the very few guys I have met in real life who would get genuinely overjoyed at the good fortune of just about anyone! Then I thought what is this emotion? I tried to find a word for it. I searched a few languages and none seem to have a word for it. If we describe it as "feeling joy at the good fortune of others" then the antonym of this is simple. Its jealousy. I asked many people about the antonym of jealousy. No one had an answer.

It was a shock. We as a culture have developed very complicated emotions and thought processes but we lack a word for this emotion. I ran another simple experiment. Many of my friends are in Bangalore where the local language is Kannada. For daily interaction most of my friends have picked up a few Kannada words. It was surprising that "all" of them knew the Kannada for NO (which is "illa") but hardly anyone (not even many who have stayed in the city for decades) knew the Kannada for YES (which is "haudu").

Finally I found a word which represents the exact opposite of jealousy. Its MUDITA, a Pali word from Buddhism. Just thinking of the meaning of the word feels blissful. It has been prescribed as an emotion which can reduce all other negative emotions. And like every other aspects of Buddhism this has also been developed in a very scientific manner. There are prescribed set of steps and practices which have been prescribed to help develop "mudita".

How beautiful it would be if we can vicariously feel the joy of every person. Whatever gives us joy we can try to find people experiencing the same feeling and try to draw joy from it. And there is no dearth of people feeling blissful (for fractions of second) every second. Like Emelie counting the number of orgasms in Paris in an instant which mounts up to 15!

How Sweet is the Berry!

I have read this story long back. Over the years I have told it ample number of times to many friends and also ample number of times to myself (when situations seem out of my hands).

Once upon a time a man was wondering in the woods. He was chased by a tiger. Chased so, he ran and finally found a cliff and a strong vine running downhill. He took hold of it and started descending down the cliff. The tiger stood at the top of the cliff looking at the man with interest. Half through the descent the man looked down. There was standing another tiger looking at him with expectant eyes. Stuck between these two tigers the man just hung by the vine hoping for one of the tigers to move away. Suddenly, he could hear some noise and looking above saw one black and a white mice trying to cut the vine. It seemed like imminent death.
Hanging thus the man suddenly could smell something sweet. Looking sideways he saw this wild berry plant bearing a bright ripe red berry. The man was mesmerised by its beauty. He pulled it gently and put it in his mouth. It had the divine test as of the wild berries which get ripe in wilderness. He exclaimed, "how sweet is the berry"!

They interpret the tiger up the cliff as past and the awaiting tiger downhill as future. Both may seem scary. The vine is like the time-line. The mice are the Yin-Yang forces playing their roles. And the berry is the "present". In spite of everything the berry is sweet...

Violence and Morality

Last weekend I was reading a nice book while on my way to the beach (very early in the morning). The book was explaining how internal violence (or conflict-inside) gets manifested in the form of external violence. Just the other day I was arguing with my friend how wrong it is to kill someone for his food-habit (ref: mob lynching in India killing people who were accused of eating beef). And in a moment of inspiration it all seemed to fall into place. How disturbed one must be to kill another person? How loveless his life must be? How unsettled, dry, and melancholic his life must be? Then followed an instant surge of pity and sadness for the men who did such a barbaric deed. 

Then I was trying to think, what might be the reason of internal violence? I think most of internal conflicts arise when the way I am is different from the way I am expected to be. Why that might be the case? It can be the case because of two reasons: viz. A- I have not understood myself and my natural tendencies carefully and deeply. B- I try to follow certain accepted standards set by peers, parents and priests. That externally enforced morality creates tension within myself. 

Morality is natural. No one should have to learn morality. And when we start teaching morality we create both of the above conditions for internal conflict. We stop the internal independent inquiry of a person and we enforce external rules. The more morale a society tries to be the more hypocrisy it fosters and that in turn create more internal violence which is reflected in external violence. 

I shall give one simple (but macabre) example. Child sex abuse is a horrible skeleton in the cupboard of our society. India is one of the very few developing nations to have done a proper exhaustive study on this and the results are shocking. The percentage of minors facing sexual abuse in India is much higher than that in a developed country (development defined by economic advancement). Not only this, also India is the only nation (I could find) where the prevalence of male-minor sexual abuse is higher than female-minor abuse. 

When shall we realise that we need to stop “following” moral rules and start looking deep into our own selves? We do not need a police to keep morality; we do not need a God to teach us morality. The more morality we preach the more chaos we shall bring upon ourselves. 

Taking Personally

One of my good friends was telling about some of her experiences. It seems to happen often with her that people advise her “why do you take it personally?”. This is mostly when they have to tell her something cold or callous about her work. And my friend gets stressed by this. So the question was how can one not take personally when one has put all her effort and keenness into a certain thing? For example if you cook with all your love and care for your partner and the partner just says its not tasty enough. How does one deal with it? How does one not  take it personally? When you have put hours of earnest and passionate effort into a report and your colleague brings some stupid unthought argument to show that its not good enough. How do you stay impersonal and unaffected and go with the same colleague in the evening for an official supper? 

So how do we not take things personally? 

I think there are two ways we can look at it. First of all not taking it personally means one has to be detached from it. And this means not getting too much engaged in what you do. If I do not put my best effort then I won’t get so attached to what I do. However this actually means I have to get less passionate about what I do. I lose passion and, hence, I also lose taking comments personally. This is a good plan but not a very positive strategy. There has to be a second way. A more joyful and interesting way. Not this bleak passionless way. 

If we think a bit more then we can see where the real culprit is in all this confusion. In a situation there are two kinds of participants. The first kind of participant is physical consisting of impersonal inanimate things. It includes our work our effort our tools and our product. The second is living things that can judge. 

And there are two kinds of information that we can get from those who judge. One is factual and the other is judgemental. For example factual information will consist of the real characteristics (which is the same for any observer). The judgemental information is something that is given by a person without much thought. These are mostly affected by the person’s own issues and mental state and not by what he or she might be observing. 

So while doing something we should get passionate and personal with the work (which is the nonjudgemental impersonal participant in an event) and not with the ones who may/will judge. And when my product is being judged I have to focus on the factual information I get about it. If someone says that my report is crap then I have to think is it a factual comment or a judgemental? If it is a factual comment then this will be observed by everyone and will be with some reason. If someone says the cake I baked was not tasty then to make it a fact the judge should give me factual reasons about what went wrong. If the comment is without reasons and facts then it is just a “judgemental” information. A judgemental information, as we discussed, does not depend on the product. It just depends on the psychological-condition of the person passing it. If someone did not like my cake (without any apparent reason) then may be that someone has got a headache or some such health problem. Or may be he had a terrible fight an hour before with his friend and is not in a mental state to appreciate anything nice. 

To summarise, I think, the recipe to not take things personally is two fold. Get attached to the work and not to the persons who may be judging it. And while getting information about the work try to discriminate between factual comments and judgemental comments. Factual comments are universal (can be seen by anyone with similar experience) and come with reasons. Judgemental comments are mostly because of the state of mind in which the commentator is (and hence just reflects his mental state and not any attribute of your work). And someone with a bad state of mind just needs our compassion and may be a jaddu ki jhhappi (magical hug)!

Line from a wise mother!

        I recently met an interesting person. Somehow into our discussion came the topic of having babies. In that he quoted his mother who would say "when you decide to have a baby be prepared to raise the baby on your own!" Do not rely on a partner to help you or to be with you in this process. Many things can happen; relations can change and (heaven forbid) the partner may also meet with some unfortunate end. Among all these uncertainties one should not take the responsibility of a kid if he/she is not strong enough to do it on his/her own.

      I found this extremely intriguing. The more I think on it the more interesting it appears. First of all it means one should not rely on the assumed future benediction while starting something new. And if we contemplate further this line of thought we can have many interesting conclusions.

     Just like a baby when one starts seeing a potential partner one should be ready for any future. One should not start with the rosy assumption of "forever together" where "forever" is such an ill-defined phrase. But does it mean that we start a relation with lot of anxiety and negativity? Not necessarily. In fact its exactly the opposite. When starting a date we can assume that the love is already there. I remember in one of the movies the main character meets a girl in a club and asks her "can we fast forward to day-3?" Similarly when we are seeing anyone why can we not fast forward to day-N? What stops us from having the intensity of day-N on day-1? Because I have decided to give up relying on future-benevolence I can as well forget the impact of time all together. If I am not trying to trust on the existence of day-N then why not have day-N's intensity and excitement on day-1? Here N can be the day when your love would have been the most intense and beautiful.

     And if we project it a bit further then having a baby is like starting a new endeavor. And as the wise mother said let us not assume the presence of the partner in future and be ready to carry the endeavor forward on our own. Can we not assume "love" as this endeavor? Can we not, then, not assume the presence of the willingness or presence of the partner in this project as well? Then the love becomes free-standing depending only on my own willingness and earnestness. A love that is not depending on the other. The other is a (sweet) desirable part of it but not the necessary part of it.

    The more I ponder on the line of the wise mother the more beautiful and enlightening it sounds. If we can jump to day-N when we meet someone and jump on our own (without necessarily having his/her support) it is bliss, is not it?

Personalisation of Justice

Travelling from Chennai to Hyderabad I was offered the opportunity to be stranded in the airport for almost three hours. Not knowing what to do I was shifting my place of waiting and thereby witnessing different passengers doing different things. Thats when I marked a group of laud-guys and their families. The thing so conspicuous about this bunch was the way they were talking in English to each other and to their kids trying to put a civilised aura around them, or so they might be thinking. Except the skin colour and their attire there was nothing Indian about them. I was feeling amused when a teenager girl in very plain cloth came to this group with a kid. I was thinking this might be a different set of passengers all together. In a little while I could understand that the kid belonged to this group and the girl was a maid; a girl who might be barely 11 or 12. And then their boarding gate number was announced and they moved as  a team. And then the “owner” of the maid handed her three carry-bags and the whole party shifted. It made me mad to see how such educated and (hopefully) well travelled guys can be so insensitive. To me it was gross injustice.

This led me to think ob "what is justice?”. Can we really have a universal definition of justice? If the apparent victim does not mind is it still injustice? Like in the above situation the teenage-girl did not seem to mind (though she was obviously not enjoying it). Trying to generalise I think the lack of equality fosters and gets manifested as injustice. However, is not inequality highly personal? Is not inequality impossible to remove? Those who argue otherwise may try to protest against any economy or business class seats in aeroplanes. Those who argue otherwise may try to convince the auto-makers to have only one brand of vehicle in market. 

Of course, there are gradations in inequality and injustice as well. Some, like lack of food in one pocket and wastage of luxury food in another, is a severe form of inequality or injustice. But then does the human hormones know these? Do we feel a kind of envy, when we see someone with a cuter partner, and a different form of envy when we are hungry and someone else is having a party? 

I do not think so. Of course to know for sure one needs fMRI kind of analysis taken from different classes of human beings. From my personal experience I can confirm that the envy I felt as a kid seeing some other kid with better stuffs than me is not any different from the envy I feel now in different circumstances. And the more interesting observation that I can make is that it is rare that I feel envy. And its true for most. Our brain is wired to focus on things that are positively engaging than things that are depressing. 

I think it can be concluded that injustice is personal and the feeling of pain is because  it is a relatively unexplored field of speculation.

Hero-worship (Gandhi-jayanti special)

In the recent years there has been a lot of opinions and views against Mahatma Gandhi. There have been arguments and counter-arguments. When you listen to these they tend to give a deja-vu of atheists arguing with theists. You tend to find a lot of "opinions" and very little "facts" from both the quarters. One thing that both these arguing parties tend to do is to assume that Gandhi was a super-human and the pro-Gandhi try to fight to prove that yes he was a demi-god and the anti-Gandhi try to argue otherwise.

This reminds me of a movie (the title of which I can not recollect) in which the main actor was a teenager student who was very mature for his age and was depended upon by many of his friends and towards the end even by the school principal. Then something difficult happens for which even our hero has no solution and he says "common; am just a boy!".

How true! I am not going to tell anything in favor of against of the Mahatma. I shall just reaffirm that he was just a man. He had his limitations. But one thing that we should appreciate about him is something that is there in every great leader, which is that they absolutely totally believe in what they think and say. This total conviction about what they want from life gives them that charisma which then makes most others follow him.

So on this great occasion of the birth-day of the Mahatma let us try to think deep about what we want of our lives. (PS: I have been thinking of this very deeply for past few months...!). 

Inspiration to tryst with destiny!

I joined Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in 2006. With an attire of khaadi kurta and pony-tail I soon got the name of “Rocky-sir” amongst students. In 2007 August 15 I asked students to join us for a group discussion on the major problems in India and what “we” (i.e. you and me) can do towards it. The squirrel from the Ramayana has always been one of my biggest inspirations. For those who may not know the story, in the epic Ramayana Lord Rama builds a bridge from Indian mainland to Sri Lanka. All the mighty animals from the jungle came to help the Lord. Even a tiny squirrel did not let his size deter it and came to help. To have the maximum contribution it found a novel way. It would dip in ocean, then roll on sand and then shake off the sand on the bridge. Pausing the story here I an just say that I have always believed that irrespective of our size we can contribute in our own ways. Few days after that group discussion one student came to meet me with a lot of his ideas. We tried to work together on some of those which later gave rise to the Zero-Illiteracy-Zone (ZIZ) activities in the IIT where our students would teach the children from local schools over the weekends. 

Long after that phase a few weeks back the same student asked me to discuss and muse over the problems of the nation and what can be done. And we had the first meeting over which we tried to discuss the major problems of the nation. And on this independence day blog I shall try to put down what I feel as the major issues in the nation right now. 

One aspect we discussed was the range of welfare majors the government has been trying to take. Some tend to suggest that the government should not give anything for free. However, in a civilised society it is just inhumane to deny our own citizens the right to the bare minimum basic amenities like food and medical aid. However there are two major problems in these schemes. First of all many of these do not reach the intended sector because of corruption. And secondly many times those who get the benefit of things like free food choose not to work at all. Corruption is in lime light anyway. So we shall try to focus on the second problem of laziness. This comes when a person loses inspiration to improve his own lot. 

The second biggest issue we found was “inequality” be it based on caste, religion or sex. Female foeticide and infanticide are still happening as we muse. Caste based politics and discrimination is still a big deterrent in many regions. That made me think of how things are different in South Africa and India. In SA they tend to think that the white minority is still successful because they have inherited lot of capital over generations. In India (and also in many cases in SA) the real inheritance is not money, rather heritage. Because my ancestors were of high caste, learned and respected I "believe I can do it as well”. So the actual problem we found (besides the usual age old stigma and the lack of education) was that we need to inspire people growing/living under oppressive environment that they can do it. 

I do not want to tell that corruption or the lack of education is are not big problems. I just want to thrust that the real and the biggest challenge will be to “inspire” and make Indians "tryst with destiny”.

Foresight

Many want to know the future and that explains the market for fortune-tellers. Let us assume that we have a real fortune-teller who can exactly tell the future. Will that help us? The common answer will be yes, we will be more prepared for what is coming. However there is a small misunderstanding in this. In true sense if someone is with foresight then she can see what is going to happen. Nothing can change it. Because if you can change it then it is not happening then the forecast goes wrong! So let us accept that prediction by a genuine person will always happen.

Now let us analyse the two characters of a forecast. Either it is a good thing (that will happen) or a bad thing. If it is a good thing then we know it beforehand. It takes away all the fun, is not it? There is no surprise factor and hence no real joy in left in it.

And if the event predicted is a negative one then we worry about it from now (even when it has not happened) and our time till that event is miserable or at least not as joyful as it could have been. Again the lack of the surprise factor makes it worse.

So ultimately we can conclude that a foresight is a useless thing to go for.